Enough
ESL (English as a Second Language), EFL (English
as a Foreign Language), and ESP (English for Special
Purposes)! I am going to start a school for EBL (English
as a Broken Language) and use the billboard ads near my
house as a text.

First of all, if you advertise it in English, that fact,
alone, says something like, "We are international," "We
are fashionable," "We appeal to the cosmopolitan person
of today". It is entirely in keeping with the de facto
presence in the New Europe of English as an
international language. The French don't like this, but
that's tough.

OK, the one in the photo (above) is correct. But on an
adjacent billboard is a picture of a woman shaving her
legs. (Only my 19th-century sense of propriety keeps me
from letting you see it!) Actually, all you see is the
woman from the hips down. She is seated and you see the
bottom part of the "fashionable" pair of shorts she is
wearing. A red brand label is visible on the shorts.
Then, you don't see all of the legs, just the part she
is shaving, the upper thigh. Her delicate hand is
holding an equally delicate-looking but very modern,
abstract razor that looks like it could double for some
gizmo on Star Trek. Before I saw the text, I thought it
was an ad for women's razors. Silly me. Then, I look at
the text below the ad. It reads:

No superfluous. Just Exyn. Fashion and Blue Jeans
Collection.

It's all in English. The incorrect form "no" for "not"
is in the original. (In English, "no" negates a noun, as
in "No Smoking". "Not" negates an adjective, as in "Not
superfluous". In this case, Italians commonly think that
"no" is used in both cases in English. It is part of
their version of "international English". It is also the
same as the Italian word "no," to mean the opposite of
"yes". It is close enough to what would be the correct
Italian negative, grammatically, in this case: "non".
The word "superfluous" is equally similar to the Italian
form, "superfluo". In Italian, thus, the expression
would be "non superfluo". Why say it in English?
Well, "We are international," "We are
fashionable," "We appeal to the cosmopolitan person of
today". They are selling fashionable clothes, so it
fits. If they were selling toilet plungers,
probably not. The ad continues with "just". That's not
Italian, but close enough to "giusto" to have a
dual-language pun. "Giusto" means "correct" in Italian
and that might be called up in the mind of an Italian
reading the ad.

The last part, "Fashion and Blue Jeans Collection" is
fascinating. I am old enough to remember when blue-jeans
were not fashionable. They were regarded as work
clothes. You put them on to go work or play rough.
"Don't wear your good pants! Put on those old jeans!"
Mommy used to say. The idea that jeans would someday be
included in a "collection" never would have occurred to
me: "Presenting Armani's new collection of Autumn jeans
at the Grand Hotel," or something like that, still
amazes me. Jeans have been elevated in a way that other
American cultural icons such as rock 'n' roll and
fast-food have not—that is, elevated to a state of
elegance. This may have to do with the Italian love of
the bella figura — looking good. It has nothing
whatsoever to do with whether or not blue-jeans are
functional clothing. In any event, jeans are part of the
cultural invasion by the United States of the rest of
the world.

So—nothing superfluous. The woman is shaving what is
obviously superfluous pubic hair below the line of her
fashionable shorts. Whether or not a woman shaving up
there is (1) necessary, or (2) fashionable, an ad like
this works, obviously, only in those places that make
cultural assumptions about what hair is desirable and
where. Message: there is nothing superfluous about our
line of clothing, either. Just Exyn: non-superfluous,
functional but good-looking and fashionable clothing.